Navigating Change: A Conversation with Josh Lamers, Co-founder of Collective of Child Welfare Survivors

Adoptees Crossing Lines

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Josh Lamers

Adoption is trauma. How do we help surviving children heal the wounds they’ve sustained from the child welfare system? Josh Lamers, a transracial adoptee, is public enemy #1 for child welfare agencies in Canada. He joins the show to discuss what adoption and child welfare are like in Canada; and how his organization, Collective of Child Welfare Survivors, advocates for child welfare survivors though addressing harm reduction, counseling, unpacking racial displacement, and community development…amongst many other things.

“The child who's now back in your home is not the same child who was taken out of your home.”

What we discussed

(00:21) Who is Josh Lamers?

(01:57) His transracial adoption experience OR “My adoption was illegal”

(08:51) How child welfare works in Canada OR Adoption system in Canada

(13:47) Insights from studying adoption OR What’s wrong with research about adoption

(23:51) Psychiatric system and adoption

(26:26) Disability and adoption (and why Josh’s adoption was illegal)

(32:22) Myth of “unmanageable kids”

(34:05) How they advocate for child welfare survivors

(45:50) How to support child advocacy work

Links

Outsiders Within

Collective of Child Welfare Survivors: Donate

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Credits

Special thanks to Samuel Oyedele for editing our podcast, support his work on Instagram or e-mail him at [e-mail]